Activities Fair, It didn't go too horribly!

Today was the activities fair. Only Dylan brought books, and we had no poster/handouts, though we managed to procure cookies, and a laptop for display purposes. So now we have a list full of freshman interested in Skiffy! (and also Anemos).

I think we should send out an email on Monday, telling everyone to come to skiffy (and also anemos) on Wednesday, the first 8th period. We might as well plan it out on the forums (as well as plan the first meeting? or anything people think is semi-relevant).

Things we should include:
Club names, dates, room #, brief description, possibly club leader names.
Addresses of relevant websites + forums (here, the vault, the horribly outdated tjhsst website, the zss forums).

So, what do you think???

I think this forum lacks activity.

Also someone needs to transcribe that list for us, so we can sell those emails get in contact with Freshmen and tell then when and what to sign up for.

I think that sounds good for the email.

What do we want to do the first day? I assume a fairly large chunk of time will be devoted to get to know you sort of things. I remember freshman year we went around in a circle and said our name, grade, and our favorite science fiction/fantasy books, so we might want to do something like that.
We'd probably still have some time after that for something else, so... I dunno. Whose job is it to make up activities this year?

Stoat: I remember doing something like that sophomore year too, it's a good idea.

It's ferret's/exceph's/bmi's responsibility.

Things to do the first day:
Introduction activity
Get people introduced to various websites & forums
She's an elf
Read/critique someone's work
Munchkin
Plan an rp
Plan how we will do coti this year
Some sort of discussion

Random nonsense: ohhhh! jb is at 499 posts!

So I'm thinking...
Well, what I'm thinking right now is that this forum needs a "fast reply" option.

Other than that, I'm thinking an orientation email could look like this:

Dear Science Fiction/Fantasy Writer,

Welcome to Skiffy! We now have eternal ownership of your soul, which we may or may not feed to our mascot, Willis. We're happy you decided to join our club!

The first meeting will be on [[Whatever the date is]], and we fully expect you to hope you will show up for this thing you signed up for. Bring any writing/ideas you have already, but be prepared for them to be picked apart and separated into tropes with humorous names to spend most of the time listening to us rant about our club.

We meet every Wednesday, A block, in room 145. Our oligarchy leadership is made up of William Dalton an owl, Dylan Ladwig a ferret, and Alex Weissenfels a crazy octopus. (But technically, you have to listen to anyone older than you. The only people this rule doesn't apply to is juniors, because we have seniority over Morgan, even though he's technically a senior.)

Other notable members are our mascot, Willis; Mystel, who doesn't actually go to the club because she does Japan Bowl; Matt, resident dicemaster; Laura, resident rodent stoat (which is definitely not a rodent); William, who is neither Will nor Willis; Katrina, Setareh, and J, who showed up rarely last year; Morgan, who's technically a senior, yet still isn't in charge because he's shorter than Will; Robby, one of our few actual writers; Olivia, who is secretly picturing you in a dress; Kevin, resident Math Geek; and JB.

Sound OK?


Also, I disagree to advertising anemos (or however you spell it), because it meets at the same time as Mah Jongg club.

Dear Science Fiction and Fantasy Writer/Philosophy person,

Welcome to Skiffy (or Anemos)! We're happy you decided to join our club!

The first Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers (Skiffy) meeting will be on Wednesday the 23rd, A block, and the first Anemos meeting will be the same day B block. We hope you will show up for this thing you signed up for! For skiffy, bring any writing/ideas you have already, but be prepared for them to be picked apart and separated into tropes with humorous names to spend most of the time listening to us rant about our club.

Skiffy meet every other Wednesday, A block, in room 145. On the other Wednesdays, there is COTI at the same time and place (this is a closely related activity; we will explain it at the first skiffy meeting). Our oligarchy leadership is made up of William Dalton, an owl, Dylan Ladwig, a ferret, and Alex Weissenfels, a crazy octopus. The one who screamed at you during the activities fair was Robby.

Anemos meets every Wednesday, B block, in room 209. Be prepared to discuss interesting things. J.B. Reiter, the one with blue hair, is the leader. Anemos and Skiffy have traditionally had a large overlap in members, so we hoped that many of you who expressed interest in one of our clubs may be interested in trying out the other. I (Blue-hair guy) encourage urge BEG(!!) you to come pay us a visit (Wednesday B blocks in case you have an incredibly short memory) if, during the course of your busy day, you find yourself asking "why," "what if," or anything having to do with brains in jars or the Matrix.

The skiffy club forums are at http://z13.invisionfree.com/TJ_Skiffy_Club/index.php, you may register now if you want, or wait until the first meeting. The vault (which we use for online peer review) is at http://vault.dladwig.com/. You will have to ask Dylan Ladwig for an account before being able to use it, however, if you log on with the username "removed" and password "removed", you can access a demo account. http://tvtropes.org is an invaluable resource, and a great time-waster. An extremely outdated skiffy website is at http://activities.tjhsst.edu/scifi, if you are interested in looking at that. The TJ zss forums are at http://tjsurvivors.wetpaint.com, though they are sort of dead. The TJ tabletop forums are at http://tjtabletop.forumotion.net/. The tjzss irc channel is #tjzss on irc.efnet.org (if you don't know what that last one was, don't worry).

Make sure to sign up!
--the skiffy/anemos community

Here is my improvement of DC's letter.

EDIT: added in jb's stuff
EDIT: fixed strikethru's on jb's stuff
EDIT: added in dylan's stuff
EDIT: added in full club name, to minimize confusion

This post has been edited by thesomethingcool on Sep 22 2009, 05:21 PM

Please add this after the line you have in there about Anemos:

Anemos and Skiffy have traditionally had a large overlap in members, so we hoped that many of you who expressed interest in one of our clubs may be interested in trying out the other. I (Blue-hair guy) encourage urge BEG(!!) you to come pay us a visit (Wednesday B blocks in case you have an incredibly short memory) if, during the course of your busy day, you find yourself asking "why," "what if," or anything having to do with brains in jars or the Matrix.

woooh, email sent, some of you were on the mailing list (in addition to teh freshmen). 3 emails failed (bad addresses).

EDIT: currently 14 signed up for skiffy, and 11 signed up for anemos, let's see how much that changes!

OK, we've only got 15 people signed up for Skiffy tomorrow, and 12 of them are visible non-freshmans. One of the people we can't see is me (I'm working on it) and one of them is probably Angelica.

Would it be cool if I send out an email in reply to Willis's that informs the recipient that we will hunt them down and... uh, do bad things to them if they don't show up?

Somehow, that doesn't seem like the best idea...

Also, 2 more for skiffy, and 1 more for anemos as of a few minutes ago. The email doesn't seem to be having a *huge* effect, which is disappointing, but hopefully we got a few more freshmen out of it.

Also, I mentioned the full name of the club in the final email, will get forum version updated.

By the way, do any of you know who Derek Lai is?

Uh, I don't.
Is it a non freshman?

non-freshmen are gender-neutral?

(so i didn't even get a mention in that e-mail if there were a sadder looking smiley, i would use it)

(anyway, has anyone else had trouble with the board skins? they don't appear to be working for me anymore)

non-freshmen are gender-neutral?

(so i didn't even get a mention in that e-mail if there were a sadder looking smiley, i would use it)

(anyway, has anyone else had trouble with the board skins? they don't appear to be working for me anymore)

Yeah, board skins are broken for me as well. The default skin is rather painful to my eyes T_T

^The whole point of that was to point out a sadder smiley, just so you know...

Also, non-freshmen aren't gender neutral, but _freshmen_ might be, for all I know... We seem to have two so far, by the way... At least one seems to be here to stay...

interestingly enough, the freshmen who is staying is both female and active in sysadmin understudy.